Orijin

Wednesday, 4 February 2015

Commuter train smashes into SUV on tracks, killing 7 people

A
packed commuter train slammed into a sport utility vehicle on the tracks at a
crossing and erupted into flames Tuesday night, killing seven people, the
governor said.

The
northbound Metro-North Railroad train struck a Jeep Cherokee in Valhalla, about
20 miles north of New York City, railroad spokesman Aaron Donovan said. Killed
were the SUV's driver and six people aboard the train, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said,
making this crash the railroad's deadliest.

"You
have seven people who started out today to go about their business and aren't
going to be making it home tonight," Cuomo said.

The
railroad crossing gates had come down on top of the SUV, which was stopped on
the tracks, the Metro-North spokesman said. The driver got out to look at the
rear of the vehicle, then she got back in and drove forward and was struck, he
said.

The
train shoved the SUV about 10 train car lengths. Smoke poured out of the
scorched front rail car, its windows blackened.

Witnesses
said they saw the flames shooting from where the crash occurred, in a wooded
area near a cemetery.

Ryan
Cottrell, assistant director at a nearby rock climbing gym, said he had been
looking out a window because of an earlier, unrelated car accident and saw the
train hit the car, pushing it along.

"The
flames erupted pretty quickly," he said.

He
said from his vantage point, it wasn't clear that the car was on the tracks as
the train approached and "we didn't see it was going to collide with
anything until the actual impact."

Passengers
described a bump and said they smelled gasoline from the vehicle.

More
than 750 passengers likely were aboard the train, including Justin Kaback,
commuting home to Danbury, Connecticut.

"I
was trapped. You know there was people in front of me and behind me, and I was
trapped in the middle of a car and it was getting very hot," he told ABC
News. "All the air was turned off so there was no circulation so it was
definitely scary especially when people are walking by on the outside and they
said, 'The train's on fire. There's a fire.'"

Passenger
Stacey Eisner, who was at the rear of the train, told NBC News that she felt
the train "jerk" and then a conductor walked through the train
explaining what had happened. She said her train car was evacuated about 10
minutes later using ladders to get people out.

The
other rail passengers were moved to the rear of the train, which had left Grand
Central Terminal in Manhattan about 45 minutes earlier.

Passengers
got off from the rear. About 400 of them were taken to the rock climbing gym
for shelter. Buses were heading there to pick them up and take them to their
destinations.

The
train sat on the tracks at the crossing with thick smoke billowing from it.

All
railroad grade crossings have gate arms that are designed to lift automatically
if they strike something like a car on the way down, railroad safety consultant
Grady Cothen said. The arms are made of wood and are designed to be easily
broken if a car trapped between them moves forward or backward, he said.

Metro-North
is the nation's second-busiest railroad, after the Long Island Rail Road. It
was formed in 1983 and serves about 280,000 riders a day in New York and
Connecticut. Service on its Harlem Line was suspended between Pleasantville and
North White Plains after the crash.

Metro-North
has been criticized severely for accidents over the last couple of years. Late
last year, the National Transportation Safety Board issued rulings on five
accidents that occurred in New York and Connecticut in 2013 and 2014,
repeatedly finding fault with the railroad while also noting that conditions have
improved.

Among
the accidents was a Dec. 1, 2013, derailment that killed four people, the
railroad's first passenger fatalities, in the Bronx. The NTSB said the engineer
had fallen asleep at the controls because he had a severe, undiagnosed case of
sleep apnea.

Last
March, the Federal Railroad Administration issued a stinging report on
Metro-North, saying the railroad let safety concerns slip while pushing to keep
trains on time. Railroad executives pledged to make safety their top priority.